Hugh Bonneville, who plays the upstanding Earl of Grantham in Downton Abbey, launched a campaign on Twitter on Saturday to force the social-networking website to prohibit advertisers of pornograpy from sending unsolicited messages.

“Ban 'pornbots’ from following and spamming users on Twitter,” demanded the star of the film Conspiracy of Silence. He did not say whether he plans to extend his moral crusade to other media where sexual services are advertised.

In Downton Abbey, the earl’s family were grateful that a sexual scandal was covered up by a newspaper tycoon. These days, the courts would act as moral arbiter.

Ploughing a lonely furrow

War Horse could scoop six Oscars on Sunday night, but it has failed to win over Guy Watson, the organic farmer who ploughs the Devon fields near the location of Steven Spielberg’s film.

Watson is upset by the scene in which a farm will be lost unless a horse can plough a rough Dartmoor field by dawn. “Ploughing that stony virgin field with a team of sturdy cobs would have been improbable; with a puny thoroughbred it was ludicrous,” he sniffs.

News in brief

While her frocks in Upstairs Downstairs are ravishing, Keeley Hawes is more concerned about what she doesn't wear.

“My character joins the 'Women’s League of Health & Beauty', so she has to go out and do exercises in the park in a pair of pants,” says the actress,who plays Lady Agnes. “One of my lines is something like, 'I didn’t realise the shorts would be so brief’. I read it and felt terrified.

“Normally, with that sort of thing, you try and fit thermals underneath, but there is nowhere to hide in those pants and vest.”